Jerome Powell spoke Monday at a NABE conference in Nashville, where he said a whole bunch of nothing.

I hope readers will forgive the drab assessment. The problem — one problem, there are plenty — with incessant Fed communications is that in the absence of material events between policy gatherings, there’s only so much to say above and beyond what’s communicated in the FOMC statements, projections and dot plot.

As I complained Monday on social media — where I wouldn’t be if I cared as much about my own sanity as I purport to — the law of diminishing returns on Fedspeak sets in pretty quickly after each meeting, which is to say it sets in the very next day, because what else is there to say?

These folks — Fed officials — have repeated themselves, verbatim, so many times over the past seven business days that carbon-based traders couldn’t possibly be expected to keep up with the associated Bloomberg all-caps headlines. And they (traders) shouldn’t have to. Because if the Fed doesn’t have anything new to say — anything even remotely incremental to offer — then why are they talking? Surely they have something better to do.

In any event, Powell on Monday went through the motions. The world’s largest economy is “solid” and he intends to keep it that way as best he can. There’s no need for additional labor market softening to achieve 2% inflation. Policy isn’t on a pre-set course. Decisions are made meeting-by-meeting, but the Fed’s on a path to neutral “over time.” The risks around the dual mandate are balanced, and current conditions have set the stage for additional disinflation.

Did you learn anything? No? Neither did anyone in attendance, but fortunately there was a Q&A. Unfortunately, that too was a non-event. Powell called last week’s revisions to the BEA’s national income data “quite interesting.” “Interesting” is an interesting word choice. I’d call those revisions evidence to support my long-standing contention that this — macro — is a hopelessly imprecise soft science on scientific days and astrology on all the others.

That’s not Powell’s assessment, though. He’s inclined to consider the revisions — which had the effect of pushing the saving rate two full percentage points higher — evidence that the American consumer’s in better shape than previously believed. The new saving rate, Powell said, suggests consumers can keep spending.

The Fed, he went on, doesn’t feel like it’s in a rush to cut rates quickly. The pace of additional cuts will depend on the data, and the Fed doesn’t yet have the data it needs to decide about the November policy meeting. Regular readers know how I feel about the November meeting: Absent an unequivocal reason to cut, they should skip it in the interest of staying off the front pages in and around the election. If the data demands another cut, so be it. If not, not. Do note: That should be the policy anyway (i.e., election or no election), particularly now that the Committee took out 50bps of preemptive “insurance” against a sharper deterioration in the labor market.

The Fed does take data received during the pre-meeting quiet period into account, Powell was keen to emphasize. I don’t think there were any doubts about that, but he put it out there just in case. Markets should assume that such data “can really matter.” Remember: The Fed will get a jobs report during the next blackout, on November 1, although given the prospect of dockworker strikes and distortions tied to Mother Nature’s decision to turn North Carolina into Atlantis, it’s fair to suggest that release will be discounted.

Powell addressed housing inflation. Sort of. It’s stubborn and sticky, he conceded. But it’s coming along. Shelter costs will slow as leases turn over, he mused, returning to a familiar talking point. The direction of travel, he said, is clear on that front.

Oh, and he suggested market participants are too obsessed with the SEP. I agree, although as I’ve gently pointed out on any number of occasions, including after the September FOMC meeting, traders will be forgiven for putting a lot of emphasis on the dot plot when it comes to wagering on the likely course of rates. After all, the dot plot is the revealed distribution of projections for that course from the people in charge of setting it.

Asked by an attendee if he has a love-hate relationship with the dots, Powell said that’s “not unfair.” Everybody laughed.

Here’s a “funny” suggestion: If the Fed isn’t enamored with the market’s dot plot obsession, they could just stop publishing the damn thing.